Publicly traded companies – faced with the challenges of the global macroeconomic situation, the rapidly evolving business landscape and their stakeholders – tend to innovate more swiftly than private companies. This entails co-ordinating their IR program in an integrated, dynamic and intelligent manner through ever-evolving technologies.
To meet these challenges, IR teams adopt various technological innovations to enhance communication effectiveness and transparency with shareholders, potential investors and the market at large. This ecosystem must focus not only on legal compliance but also on digital transformation, a process already well under way here in Brazil.
One of the innovations I have witnessed is increased analytical sophistication, often through big data, allowing teams to process large volumes of operational, financial and market information to identify valuable insights and market trends.
This extends to data taken from social media, which can help monitor stakeholder sensitivity, manage risk factors and even manage potential corporate crises. Social networks and customized mobile apps are increasingly used by IR teams as a method of disclosure, too, from quick market announcements to entire earnings calls. Chatbots and virtual assistants are also becoming part of the toolkit for interacting with stakeholders.
Additionally, market reports are increasingly automated, as software enables their timely generation and distribution to the market, saving time while ensuring accuracy.
To mitigate information asymmetry and combat insider trading, publicly traded firms are seeking to reinforce transparency and timeliness in disclosing information to the market, as well as consistently maturing their corporate governance standards. In this context, blockchain technology could be a vital ally and has become a significant emerging trend, whether in the swift implementation of regulatory or corporate advances or in the evolution of compliance in corporate processes, including biometric authentication through fingerprints or facial recognition, for example.
Some listed companies also use machine learning to optimize operational and financial performance forecasting and analyze unstructured data, such as conference and investor day transcripts. This intelligence can be linked to crowdsourcing platforms to help collect information about potential investors and market analysis.
We cannot overlook the application of AI, virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR) in the corporate environment. While AI is increasingly adopted by publicly traded companies for data analysis and process automation – aiding in identifying trends, predicting market dynamics and improving decision-making – VR and AR can create immersive experiences. This includes virtual tours of operational sites and corporate headquarters facilities, presentations of results in digital environments, and shareholder meetings in a hybrid format, including simultaneous translation.
Although these technological innovations vary according to the company’s size, economic sector, corporate governance maturity, listing segment and specific stakeholder demands, they undoubtedly tend to shape how publicly traded companies interact with their investors and society at large, making dialogue and relationships more efficient, rational, transparent, lasting and sustainable. The future has arrived and is already propelling a new era in the Brazilian capital market.
André Vasconcellos is vice president of the board of directors of the Brazilian Investor Relations Institute and a specialist in corporate law and capital markets
